I have a little ritual after work. Whenever I can, I drive down Sunset Boulevard just to see what’s new. I’ve been in advertising long enough that I still get a kick out of a great billboard, an unexpected OOH execution or one of those installations that makes you wonder, How the hell did they get that approved? A billboard for Netflix’s new film, The Last House, gave me that unexpected jolt.
There was a man. In a house. Thirty feet above Sunset Boulevard.
Not a photograph of a man. Not CGI. Not some clever forced-perspective illusion.
An actual guy was living inside a billboard.
Thirty feet above Sunset Boulevard. To promote its new sci-fi thriller The Last House, Netflix transformed a billboard at Sunset and Selma into a fully furnished living room, then placed a performer inside it for three days.
Not a mannequin. Not CGI. A real guy. Beginning Thursday, Aug. 6, the unidentified performer moved into the elevated installation and stayed through Saturday, Aug. 8, eating cereal, lounging around in a bathrobe and communicating with commuters and pedestrians below using a whiteboard.
Across the bottom of the installation was one simple question: “How long can you survive?”
It’s an absurdly simple idea. It’s also exactly why it worked. The activation brought the central premise of The Last House out of Netflix and physically dropped it onto one of Los Angeles’ busiest stretches of advertising real estate.
Directed by Louis Leterrier and starring Greta Lee and Wagner Moura, The Last House centers on a family of four who suddenly discover they have been sealed inside their home. With no apparent escape, the family must survive dwindling resources while confronting the mysterious force keeping them trapped.
Netflix essentially recreated that experience in public. “He’ll attempt to maintain a sense of normalcy over extended periods of time while ‘stuck’ in his elevated, enclosed set 30 feet above the ground at Selma Avenue and Sunset Blvd,” Netflix explained, describing the activation as an eerie reflection of the family’s isolation in the film.
The performer waved at motorists, answered questions and simply went about his bizarre domestic routine while thousands of people passed underneath him.
And then something even more valuable happened.
Everybody else started advertising it for Netflix.
Build something news cameras can’t resist
CBS Los Angeles sent cameras to the site. NBC4 covered it on its 11 p.m. newscast. KTLA interviewed people on the street. Even Citizen reportedly sent users an alert about a man inside a billboard.
Social media did the rest. Instead of buying another piece of content designed specifically to live inside somebody’s phone, Netflix created something enormous enough to make people take their phones out.
More importantly, it created something local television could shoot from the ground, from across the street and even from the air. That is where the execution becomes particularly smart.
A traditional billboard asks people to look at it. This billboard gave people something to watch.
Suddenly the out-of-home placement became experiential advertising, social content, a news story and a conversation happening simultaneously.
Even the unexpected reactions helped. Time Out jokingly dubbed the performer “Hollywood’s highest tenant,” while some observers inevitably connected the installation to Los Angeles’ very real housing problems.
Normally, watching consumers reinterpret a carefully constructed campaign might send a brand team scrambling. Here, the drift arguably made the stunt even more shareable. Because whatever people thought the guy was doing up there, they wanted to know why.
And the answer was The Last House.
The movie didn’t need great reviews. It needed a first click.
Here’s where this campaign gets even more interesting. Critics weren’t exactly welcoming The Last House with open arms. I watched it. They were right.
As of Aug. 10, its Rotten Tomatoes score had fallen to roughly 29 % across 42 reviews, with its audience score sitting in roughly the same territory.
That would usually be bad news for a theatrical release.
Moviegoers buying $15 or $20 tickets can see a rotten score, decide to stay home and take their money with them. Netflix operates under a different equation.
Subscribers have already paid. Netflix didn’t necessarily need this campaign to convince millions of people that The Last House was a masterpiece.
It needed them to wonder what the hell was going on inside that billboard long enough to eventually press play. And they apparently did.
According to FlixPatrol tracking, The Last House reached No. 1 on Netflix in 84 countries on its first day and expanded to 89 territories, including the U.S., by Aug. 9.
Netflix’s official weekly viewership numbers had not yet been released when those figures were reported, but the early third-party data suggested the stunt had succeeded in getting viewers through the front door.
That brings us to the real reason this is our Reel Ad of the Week.
The power of advertising
Advertising cannot always make a mediocre product great. But great advertising can make almost any product impossible to ignore.
That distinction matters.
The Netflix billboard didn’t explain The Last House. It didn’t feature critics’ quotes, elaborate character descriptions or three paragraphs of plot.
It gave Los Angeles one irresistible visual:
Why is there a man living inside that billboard? That question created curiosity. Curiosity generated photographs.
Photographs generated social posts. The installation attracted television crews. Television coverage created millions of additional impressions Netflix didn’t have to purchase one by one.
And all of it ultimately pointed audiences toward one button: Play. That is the enduring power of a great advertising idea. At its best, advertising doesn’t merely tell audiences something exists.
It makes them need to find out what it is.
Netflix built a house 30 feet above Sunset Boulevard, put a man inside and let the world wonder why.
Sometimes, that’s all you need.
Colin Costello is the West Coast Editor of Reel 360 News. Contact him at colin@reel360.com or follow him on LinkedIn.
